merab mamardashvili interview

7/29/2019 Merab Mamardashvili Interview

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THE CI VI L SOCI ETY

A n I n t e r v i ew W i t h M er a b

Mamardashv i l i

The idea of t he civil society is in the air t hedays. I t is an old idea, of course, but one that

seems to have a special resonance in thecontemporary climat e of social opinion. Onenotes a num ber of int ernational conferences o

the subject. I n a recent ar ticle Daniel Bellsurveyed th is rebirth of int erest and concludethat "t he demand for a return t o civil society ithe demand for a return to a manageable scal

of social life. I t emphasizes voluntaryassociations, churches, and comm unit ies,arguing that decisions should be m ade locally

and should not be controlled by the State andbureaucracies."

This demand is keenly felt in t he Soviet Union where the winds of glasnost anderestr oika are blowing thr ough established structu res. Pre-eminent among those calli

r a return to t he civil society in t he Soviet Union is Merab Mamardashvili, of t hestitute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences, in the Georgian Soviet Republic. Born in

930 in the town of Gori, Georgia, Mamardashvili is one of a new br eed of philosopher

e Soviet Union: outspoken, broadly read and international in repute. He is the authorany books and art icles including Form s and Content s of Thinking, published in 1968;

he Problem of Objective Method in Psychology, published in 1977; Classic and Non-

assic I deals of Rationality , pub lished in 1984; Phenom enology and it s Role inontemporary Philosophy and Consciousnm and the Philosophical Calling, both publish1988; and Cartesian Thought s, to be published this year. He was recent ly appointedchard D. Lombard I nternational Fellow at t he Kett ering Foundation in Dayt on, Ohio,

te in t he summ er he conducted a series of seminars there. The following int erviewflects what was on Mamardashvili's mind at that time.

________________

CAR - What is it like being a professor in the Soviet Union t oday?MM - I don't do much teaching. In the Soviet Union the functions of teaching and

search are quit e strictly separated.CAR - Would you like t o do m ore teaching?

MM - Not in t he conditions as they exist now. Marxist- Lent ph ilosophy is required ofvery student in the universities and it takes armies of professors to meet this demandI were a professor I would become part of t hat arm y and I wouldn't f ind that v ery

teresting. Research is m ore energizing and liberat ing.CAR - Where did you do y our un iversity degree?MM - At t he University of Moscow. That w as a mistake. I should have stayed in

eorgia.

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CAR - Why was it a mistake?MM - Because there was no one there who could teach me anyt hing I want ed to kno

was forced to learn by m yself. So I t aught myself English and Germ an and later Fren

nd spent most of my time in the libraries reading.CAR - Who did you read?MM - A lot of modern philosophy but especially the classical thinkers. Plato, Descart

nd Kant are m y beloved philosophers.

CAR - Weren' t those classics taught in Moscow?

MM - Only in highly t runcated form and largely to be refut ed as decadent t hinkers. ave to remember I was a student in the late forties. Stalin was still in power and it wa

the height of the anti-cosmopolitan ideology.CAR - How do you describe yourself as a philosopher?MM - In traditional terms I would be called a metaphysician.CAR - You are also billed as a political ph ilosopher.

MM - In traditional terms it is quite natural to go from metaphysics to politicalhilosophy. Plato and Kant would be examples.

CAR - What is your m ain interest as a philosopher?

MM - The study of consciousness and the symbolic structures of consciousness.CAR - How did you first become interested in philosophy?MM - By way of life. By a sense of aloneness, as though I had come from another

anet and found everyt hing strange. At some point in life, quite early in life, I think w

l have a sense of being wrenched out of t he norm al, of seeing ordinary t hingsherwise. Things that go by themselves for other people do not go by themselves for

ou. Life is full of signs to be int erpreted, Most we let pass. Some, however , we t hink

bout. Then we become philosophers. Then the signs begin to shed light on events.CAR - How early in life did t his happen with you?MM - I remem ber one day in t he fifth grade we were studying a history of Egypt. I n

e text a slave complains about his life. He sees no good in it and w ants to comm ituicide in order t o go to paradise. I have always remem bered the slave's complaint anventually I came to see reality as he saw it and that raised questions of justice andghts in my m ind. But later I cam e to see that t he slave was wrong in wanting to att an ideal life through suicide. The ideal always has to be an aspect of t he real t o be

fective. The above is in the below. We can't take short cuts through history . We can'm p ou t of histor y. Gradual ly it occurred to m e that it was what Russia did : she jum p

ut of history and committed the metaphysical suicide of trying to bypass reality for th

eal.CAR - Explain all of that.

MM - We have to go back. As a philosopher int erested in the phenomenon ofonsciousness - how consciousness shapes reality, perceives reality and can be mistak

bout reality - I naturally draw heavily on Kant whose work on t his subject has not in mind been surpassed. But it was actually thr ough Marx t hat I came t o the problem in t

rst place, especially what Marx had to say about false consciousness. The question th

ccurred to m e was: could you have a social situation t hat so co-opt ed consciousnessat no philosophical question could ever arise, t hat no ideas would ever com e into our

eads that were not controlled by t he social situation. I also read Orwell as a student arwell and Marx converged on the question of how language functions to m ediate real

nd to let consciousness emerge or not emerge. So the whole question of critical thoug



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ecame central for me.CAR - Are you a Marxist?MM - No.

CAR - Why not?MM - Because he was wrong about too m any t hings.CAR - What was he wrong about ?MM - I 'll come to that. I was explaining about consciousness and history . So it

ccurred to me that the Soviet Union was a state that had complete control of the

ructures of consciousness, such that no critical questions could arise. The more Iought about it, the more I realized that this had long been the case, that a long histo

Russia had prepared the advent of Marxist- Leninism and Stalinism and the kind ofate the Soviet Union has become in the 20th century.CAR - How far back in history do you go?MM - Back at least t o I van the Terrible in the 16th century. I think t here we find the

ubstitution of what I would call anthropomorphic thought for historical thought. I vanestr oyed Russian society , he left every th ing in ru ins. You m ay recall that in his tim e tristocracy was developing the idea that property was to be held in perpetuity. This

osed a threat to the authority and the power of Ivan. So he invented a police forcehose role was to spy on the enemies of the tsar. Not surprisingly, it turned out thatere were quite a few such enemies and they were all property holders. In this way Iv

ubstit uted the reality of the tsar as the central social and political reality. Nothing was

mportant if it didn't coincide with the will of the tsar. All of society became an elongathadow of the tsar. But shadows aren't real. From that time forward unreality becamee condition of social life in Russia. Russia became a shadow society. That is why the

nlightenment bypassed Russia. And that is certainly one of t he reasons why the Octo917 Revolution succeeded. I t f orm alized a long ahistor ical tradit ion, recreating theonditions that gave r ise to it . I t w as unreality built on unreality. As a consequence,

oviet citizens are still always shadow boxing , gett ing 48 kinds of perm ission t o do simings, not knowing ever who holds their destiny in hand, finding every attem pt at ational action thwarted by the shadows.CAR - You sound like Kafka.MM - I t was Kafka who described the state as enveloping us everywhere bu t we can

nd it nowhere.CAR - This raises the t ricky question of how we know when we are in history. Certai

arx and Lenin thought they were in history, on the very cutting edge of history as a

atter of fact.MM - Som e cultu ral symbols may help explain this bett er than analysis. During Leni

neral there were banners proclaiming such things as: communism is the cradle ofum anity, we will lead humanity into paradise, let the litt le children come to us, and th

ke. Lenin was buried in a position and in clothes reminiscent of Christ in the t omb. Theliberate parodying of r eligious sym bolism is in itself indicative of ahistorical thinking,hich is to say a form of thought that postulates ideals in such a way that they can ne

fectively interact with the real. Similarly, at the level of analysis Marx mystified theocial process by appealing to the utopian thinking of the classless society, which was pdated v ersion of t he Golden Age myt h. But where does the Golden Age exist?owhere. U-topia. To be effective, symbolic think ing has to be a way of illum inating

ality. The sym bol of t he Golden Age doesn't say such an age once existed and we m



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cover it. I t is not something m aterial. I t cannot be destroyed by a mat erial event noan it be realized in a mat erial event. Now Marx took t he Golden Age for a m aterialvent. He thought by get ting rid of private propert y a classless society w ould com e

bout. He converted a metaphysical entity into a material possibility. That is the mistae alchemists made. They tried to turn material means into spiritual ends.CAR - How m uch of th is was Marx and how m uch those like Lenin who used his

ought?

MM - Later thinkers elaborated, but the mistake is in Marx's own thinking.

CAR - So how do we know we are in history?MM - Histor ical existence requires conscious hum an part icipation in t he events of

story. This is how I get f rom m y ph ilosophical concept of consciousness to a polit icaleory. History begins with the ability to describe history reflectively, the ability to fill ie blank spaces and provide meaning. I f I were to put it in t erms of my theory of thevil society I would say t hat historical reality is disclosed by citizens deliberat ing t oget

public forums.CAR - Tell us more about th is theory.MM - All m y life I have lived in a compressed society. The distinction between t he s

nd society was eliminated. Our public life was like a black hole in t he universe, so denat it collapsed in on itself. I will express m y not ion in an im age. Think of a chess gam

ou cannot understand a chess gam e by examining the pawns; you cannot evennderstand a chess game by watching the moves; you can only understand a chess ga

y understanding the storm of psychic forces between the m oves. Civic life is like thatkes place in the pauses, in the intervals, in the spaces of public life. The poet Rilke

poke of leben in figuren - life as a play of symbols. I use spatial images to m ake the

oint that we need room t o think, to find ourselves, t o determine our comm on purposeo the concept of civil society calls for some distinctions: between public and private,etween state and society, between the ideal and the real, between the inner and oute

orlds. The civil society is based on an act of belief t hat by t rusting people to pursueeir own interests a symmetry will develop between the private and public worlds, thaur fr ee actions will converge for t he com mon good. During t he War it used to be saidat t he Germ ans were well organized. But exactly t he opposite was true. You cannot

rganize society by imposing everything from the outside, squashing and denigrating

veryt hing t hat ar ises spontaneously. That is what happened in t he October Revolutionhe state stepped in and tried to mediate everything. And that is the death of civilociety. It condemns citizens to a life after death, a minimal life that is guaranteed by

ate but cannot grow. But as a French poet says: Personne ne veut se rendre son mWe don't want to sell our souls. Now we have to return to the foundations and think

storically about how we got out of history. We have to lift up our heads and liberatedependent social forces. I have to say here that Marx was absolutely blind t o the

xistence and the impor tance of privacy as a condition of politics. Privat e propert y andasses as independent social agents are necessary conditions for the civil society. Wheobody is independent no politics is possible. A stat e wit hout citizens is a monstrosity.

here is a great irony in Marx because in denying priv ate propert y he created a worserm of private property. Do you know what t hat was?CAR - What was it?MM - Privilege. It's devastating. It leads to the worst kind of political corruption whic

the arbitr ary exercize of power.



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We in America have the str ong im pression that th ings are changing in the Soviet

nion, that a new day is dawning.MM - The cat is out of the bag and I do not think we can put it back in. Still, the

utcome of the present effort s of glasnost and perestr oika is far from cert ain. We are

oving around in a kind of fog and no one is quite sure about what is going on. Iersonally, of course, support the reform efforts and I have since the early 50s. Stalinas still alive but even then t he spirit of reform was in the air. One source was thearlier, humanistic Marx who spoke so eloquently about genuine human development a

ienation. It struck many of us that however severe alienation might be in the capitaliountries it was certainly very severe also under Stalin. I t was a great int ellectual tr agat Marx's thought did not develop along these lines rather than sinking in the morassopian thinking. The other source for reformist t hought was the hum anist tradition of

e great Russian writ ers of the 19 th centu ry and the religious philosophers like Nicolaerdyaev. Their thought was kept alive by members of the older generation, some ofhom were in concentration camps, some of whom taugh t in obscure provincial schoo

ome of whom were in exile, and some of whom went m y way of learning on t heir own

nd trying t o stay out of t rouble. I n tim e we came to know one another and in tim e, toe came t o have a cert ain influence.CAR - But you are not inclined to overestim ate that influence?

MM - Far from it. There is still a very prim itive social gramm ar in t he Soviet Union, sult of long centur ies of shadow existence. That is why Marxism str uck so many as a

ophisticated political and economic philosophy. People didn't know the difference and

ere not equipped to exam ine it critically, historically. There is still somet hing woefullycking in t he average citizen's sense of reality, somet hing broken in their relationship e world around them. They lack drive, they lack a love of life, they lack the will to se

eterm ination. They are people without consequence, that is people who cannot

nderstand social processes, who are unable to m ake social judgm ents and who lack tbility every citizen must have to relate external events to their internal convictions. Inarxian language t hey are alienated. Some Westerners say what we need is a good

onstitution. But we have a good Constitution, perhaps the most democratic and forwaoking of any in existence. The problem is we have so few citizens who are capable of

ving according t o it and realizing what is embodied in it . Recently I was talking t o somniversity students. They were complaining about t he presence of so many policemen

eir campus. I said, Why don't you organize and get rid of them. These days that migave some chance of success. But they j ust gave m e a blank look. That kind of self-etermination hadn't occurred to t hem.

CAR - How then will reform com e about? Can the state create a civil society in therocess of reform ing it self?

MM - No, absolutely not. The state is the problem not the solution. Although I mustonfess many of my colleagues think that is the way to go.

CAR - I s Gorbachev on the right tr ack?MM - I think so, unquestionably.CAR - What are his chances of success?MM - No one can say.

CAR - This seems to leave you in a very precarious situation for if the public spacesou desire were in fact created wouldn't there be a great danger that they would be



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ccupied by t he wrong people?MM - There is no guarantee that the civil society is always benign. But we m ust t ake

e risk. The civil society corresponds to t he historical possibilities of m an and history a

dram a of good and evil. This is the dignity of man: the choice of good and evil.CAR - I sn't t his somewhat f atalistic. I t seems to dim inish the political effectiveness

e freedom you desire.MM - There is no formu la for hum an freedom or rem edy for hum an idiocy. Political

ficacy is not the issue. Freedom is the issue.CAR - That seems to place you squarely wit h t he great 19t h century Russian wr itersMM - I t places me in the m ainstream of the Western t radition. It m akes me an

storical thinker.CAR - What do you t hink t he social role of the philosopher, or any t hinker for that

att er, should be? Should they speak out and be socially comm itt ed?MM - Speaking out is not the only way of doing ph ilosophy. Given my background, I

ould make a case for the philosopher as spy.CAR - But don't you have a special responsibility to society?MM - I will not be a martyr. I will speak to the leadership when it is ready to hear m

eanwhile, in m y own ways, I will encourage and educate t he leadership.

CAR - We are still left wit h the question of how t he reform s might concretely comebout in t he Soviet Union.

MM - Several th ings can be ment ioned. To begin with , t he idea of reform has taken

ot in the minds of many thinkers and a considerable number of politicians, who are nbe confused wit h t he Part y functionaries. There is considerable ethnic unr est which

roperly channeled can help the reform movement; in some states like Latvia and Estoe genetic memory is reborn in a fresh outburst of republican spirit; there is

nprecedented innovat ion in satellite nat ions like Hungary and Poland. Also there is thrce of world opinion and a growing sense of solidarity among nations. I am inclined t

peculate that the ecology movement might be the strongest force for reform. The Greovement is very strong in the Soviet Union. In any event, reform is decidedly begunnd in my own view it is now or never, the last chance for the Soviet Union to get onourse. I f t his mom ent passes another is not likely to come again soon.

CAR - Is the Cold War over?

MM - The Cold War was in part the result of the primitive social grammar I referred We spoke about capitalism and socialism as though t hey were t wo compet ing systems

ut capitalism is not a system in the same way that socialism is a system . Capitalism ,

e understand it as the way of maximizing profits by means of large, concentrated, buocially fragm ented product ion - t hat capitalism is only one historical phenomenon

mong the many phenomena that characterize contemporary European society. It is ohenomenon existing along with other phenomena that are entirely different in nature

hat m ight be called the contemporary European civil society, urban industrial societyhe entire energy, all of the cultur e in what I call urban industr ial democracies, ishanneled through many social institutions and by forces that have nothing inherently

omm on with what I would properly call the capitalist phenom enon, in the strict m eanthat word. A capitalist phenomenon does not, from its inherent nature, penetrate all

e phenomena of m odern European and American society. I n t hat sense, t he capitalisystem does not exist.

But t hat cannot be said about socialism. Socialism represents a system and a struct



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hich from its internal nature has penetrated t hrough all the ot her phenomena of our

ociety, including the m oral and ideological strata. Our problem, t hen, consists in this:at w e have socialist system s in this sense, bu t there is no developed civil society.

Western countries faced the problem, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentiethenturies, of implementing the capitalist phenomenon in a civil society; for us the

roblem is to implement the socialist phenomenon - in other words to convert what is r the only system, into becoming one phenomenon along with the other phenomena developed, articulated, and structur ed civil society in which socialism could really tak

s place. I t would be one phenom enon. And it should take that place because socialismgreat European idea, one of the great European ideas.CAR - Perhaps socialism along the lines of the welfare democracies of Western EuroMM - Oh no! I don't think welfare is a good thing at all.

CAR - Not even for t he destit ute?MM - Of course, we have t o help people. I am opposed to t he principle of welfare

ecause it makes people dependent. To be mature we have to know why and how we

ve, what are t he sources of our existence. Ortega y Gassett wrot e about t he m asses ead tissue, m eaning that large num bers of people have no relationship with t he sourc

their existence. We come to that understanding through work and responsibility. Bue principle of welfare alienates people from such sources as Marx so well said in his

arly wr itings. When I speak of socialism as a great idea I m ean the pr inciple of self-etermination. I mean in short citizens who are developed to such an extent that theyave social judgm ent, and m uscles for r esponsible and r isky actions in a society where

ey cannot even imagine a life in which they would not recognize themselves - or beithout consequence. I do not want to live the kind of life in which I would not recogniyself, and I could not consider that kind of life to be my life. Only such people may b

alled citizens. Not t hose who have t he right to t ake part in public affairs, but those wh

re obligated and are capable of carry ing out their dut ies in public life. This is an old

reek idea, one of the great achievement s of Greek society: we have not simply r ightsut the obligation to take part in public affairs, to resolve our own problems.CAR - Did you learn that from Plato?

MM - Yes. What att racted m e to Plato was his powerful m etaphor of the cave in wh ie depicts people str uggling w ith shadows. That was my problem too. And Plato showeway out : he showed that the shadows can be t ranscended by consciousness, by t he

eal. And he showed further that there was not a complete rupture between the idealnd t he reality. The polis can contain an ideal wor ld as one elem ent of its sociality. Theody social is the carrier of rationality. Plato did not m ake the m istake of Marxist-eninism: he did not let the ideal determine the real. Rather he began with the real, w

e shadows, and reached the ideal th rough t he ideal. I t corresponds to what Christianeologians call the incarnational principle, the idea that commitment to the concrete a

delity t o daily tasks and work well done can be a way of realizing t he ideal. When Pla

ought came into the religious tradition it became bifurcated: the Western strandtained m uch of Plato's realism and by t he tim e we get t o the Purit ans it is in full flow

he Eastern strand, which quit e powerfully influenced Russia, embraced a m ore m ysticher-worldly interpretation, holding t hat salvation consisted in denying the w orld rath

an working to realize its ideal possibilities.CAR - You've m entioned I m m anuel Kant several t imes. What political lessons do yo

raw from that very diff icult philosopher?



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MM - Kant believed t hat the structur e of consciousness was the same in everyone sringing int elligence to bear on social problems was by t he sam e token w ithin the gras

all. He believed that the spread of reason by its own logic would result in greater

eedom and more civil liberties. He spoke about governments treating people with thegnity that should be accorded rational people. The part icular idea I like in Kant is wh

e says about "t he citizen of the world." One of Kant's rules of thought was to alwaysink through the eyes of another and thus become cosmopolitan in outlook. Today we

ust all think from each other's perspectives and thus become citizens of the world.

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